


Deception of Luna

by 4G3NT_0R4NG3



Series: The Stories of Lich-5 and Windy [2]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Darkfic, F/M, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Misogyny, Past Rape/Non-con, Psychological Trauma, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Roommates, oh my god they were roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:27:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29384844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/4G3NT_0R4NG3/pseuds/4G3NT_0R4NG3
Summary: Lich-5 is a young Guardian who has yet to experience the many horrors of the Sol system. The Pyramid’s nightmares don’t have much of an effect on her, as she has not known the pain of loss in the same intimate way that most Guardians have. But loss is far from the only pain that one can experience, and as she soon learns, her fellow Guardians can be just as nightmarish as any of their enemies.
Relationships: Female Guardian/Male Guardian (Destiny)
Series: The Stories of Lich-5 and Windy [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2158602
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	Deception of Luna

Lich-5 considers herself to be quite lucky. At least with her assignments on Luna; not so much with her loot. She speeds across the lunar surface on her Sparrow towards Archer’s Line, having just received a bounty to clear out the Fallen there. There are three of the usual crimson phantoms en route this time; each one cowers and screams in terror as her Sparrow plows by. To her, these nightmares are just nameless red silhouettes that occasionally make creepy noises; none of them are the slightest bit recognizable. The larger ones, the ones that appear as long-dead enemies rather than Guardians, have names she can recognize from her historical studies, but nothing more than that. Despite her own experience, Lich knows that most of her fellows don’t see them that way.

The Pyramid of Luna is a nasty piece of work, to say the least. She would call it sadistic, but it would be improper of her to anthropomorphize such an alien being. The nightmares it spawns are drawn directly from the Guardians’ most painful losses; vanquished nemeses, outlived mentors, lost loves, and a myriad of others now walk again on Luna. In every case, their passing had left wounds on the people they left behind, and now the Pyramid has made those wounds fresh again.

The worst part, Lich thinks, is that doing so offers it no tactical advantage. The Pyramid doesn’t _need_ to crush Guardians’ morale; it could crush them all very literally if it so chose. This thing’s kind had caused the Great Collapse of humanity’s golden age; surely the Last City of today would be no trouble for it to exterminate. The only thing keeping them all alive is this Pyramid’s continued desire to bide its time. And in that time, it’s chosen to reopen their old wounds because it’s _fun._

The reason Lich-5 considers herself lucky is because she doesn’t have many wounds that can be reopened. She had been resurrected just after the Red War, into a world struggling to recuperate, to make some amount of sense out of the tremendous loss. Her roommate Windy isn’t a particularly old Guardian by any means, only a few years her senior, but that still put his resurrection date solidly before the War. She doesn’t pry him about it, but she’s aware that the majority of people he knew had been permanently Returned To Light by the forces of Dominus Ghaul. Windy avoids assignments on Luna like the plague, as do many of her elder acquaintances. She’s met Guardians who were resurrected in the Dark Age, now hundreds of years old, who have pushed on through every defeat humanity has ever faced since the Collapse. Lich herself has recently turned three.

Will she live to be hundreds of years old? If she does, how much will she lose in that time?

She’s coming up on Archer’s Line now. There’s already some guardian activity here; in the distance, she can pick out the dull gray bulk of a male Titan’s armor against the background of lunar dust. Ignoring his presence, she drives into the old K1 Logistics facility and gets to work.

Clearing the facility takes under ten minutes. She emerges from the front entrance with her armored Warlock’s robe dotted with scuffs and splattered with Fallen Ether. Her bounty objectives aren’t quite complete yet; there are still a few Fallen skittering around the Lunar surface that’ll have to be dealt with. She’d think that life-or-death combat would be too stressful to become boring, but when that death isn’t much more than a temporary (if painful) setback, the repetitiveness of it can get a bit dull.

 _Just gotta get it done, then I can relax._ The rewards from these last few bounties should be just enough to afford that fancy new armor set she’s been working towards, and then she won’t have much to do until the next big crisis inevitably hits the Sol system. She’s already thinking of a few new science projects she could start work on during her extended down time; monotonous work like this does little to satiate her burning curiosity.

The Titan she saw earlier seems to be approaching the K1 facility now. He’s welcome to loot the place if he wants; she only went in to get her bounties done. It’s nice to see another Guardian out here; the presence of an ally makes her feel slightly less alone in this gray hellscape, even if they don’t interact.

The boxy silhouette of his armor strikes her as oddly familiar. It’s possible that she’s seen him somewhere else before; there aren’t an unlimited number of Guardians in Sol, and Lich has met quite a lot of them.

_Wait a minute—_

Recognition shoots through her neural network like arc lightning. Instantly, her every piston is tense, all sensors on high alert. It’s _him._ Why does _he_ have to be here?

She takes it back. Having another Guardian here isn’t nice at all, not when it’s _him_ in particular _._ Lich quickly ducks back into the empty facility, taking cover from the imminent danger behind one of the large storage containers strewn about. She needs to be in a place where he isn’t in her line of sight.

Maybe she isn’t so lucky. Of course the phantoms wouldn’t reopen old wounds, only for another Guardian to do it instead. Taking stock of her emotional state, she abruptly realizes how much she’s shaking. She forcibly steels herself, struggling to regain her composure while cursing her own weakness. Simply seeing a Titan, even if it’s _him,_ should not frighten her to the point where she’s struggling to even function.

Lich is ashamed to admit to herself how much sway he still holds over her mental state. His existence is a disgusting muck polluting the back of her mind; just being reminded of him feels like wading through a stagnant pit of human sewage, from which she can never truly escape because it’s in her head. Thinking about it more only makes it worse, causes her to sink deeper. She can forget him, at least temporarily, but then eventually something random always jogs her memory and she'll be back, trapped again in that pit of sewage.

She considers abandoning her objectives and transmatting back to her jumpship, still safely parked at the landing zone. But it’s _this_ part of Luna that needs to be cleared of Fallen, and that fancy new armor set won’t be on sale forever, and she really shouldn’t be so pathetically weak to let this get to her. No, she’ll stay, to earn her extended down time if nothing else. She just needs to calm down and wait here until he—

“Oh hey, Lich. Long time no see.”

If Lich had a heart, it would have stopped beating at that exact second. His _voice,_ just his fucking _voice,_ almost throws her back there all by itself. He’s so insufferably casual with his greeting, like she’s just any other acquaintance to him.

“Hey. You mind leaving me alone?”

“Woah, relax. I’m just finishing up these bounties.” Condescension drips off of his words like spoiled milk.

“Yeah, well, please stay away from me while you do that.”

His tone sours, sounding almost disappointed. “Well you’re being awfully frigid.”

“ _Of course_ I fucking am!” Lich fumes, rage momentarily cutting through her fear. “What did you expect, that I’d be _nice_ to you!?”

The Titan pauses. “Well… yeah, kinda. I at least didn’t expect to be jilted like this.”

For a brief moment, Lich sees red. Her trembling has elevated to a truly intolerable level, and she’s currently about five seconds away from drawing her Dawnblade on this man. She knows that getting violent with him would almost certainly end poorly for her, though. With great effort, she puts together a facade of something resembling calmness.

“Look… I think I’ve got a pretty good reason for not wanting to see you. Please leave, and never try to interact with me again. I know I’m never gonna get justice, so I just want to move past this and get back as close to normal as possible. You’re making it rather difficult to do that right now.”

“ _Justice?_ ” He cocks his helmet to the side in what looks like disbelief. As if he has any right to act surprised by any of this. She can practically feel him rolling his eyes at her underneath his blank faceplate, and it makes her synthetic stomach turn. “Fine, fine. If you wanna be like that, it’s not my problem.”

He proceeds deeper into the K1 halls, finally giving Lich a reprieve from his vile presence. She turns to leave in the opposite direction, but stops short when she catches the Titan muttering a final insult under his breath.

“Fuckin’ melodramatic bitch.”

She whirls on him. “Fuck you, asshole!” she spits over her shoulder, still heading for the facility’s exit. “If I ever see you again, it’ll be too soon!”

The Titan is mercifully quiet. Lich is almost at the door; just a few more Fallen slain, and she’ll be able to go home and do her best to forget that she ever saw him again.

“No, fuck _you._ ”

Lich barely registers the Titan’s words in her audio receptors, and she doesn’t notice the suppressor grenade roll between her legs until it’s too late.

* * *

Windy’s day has been restful, to say the least. He lays sprawled out on the couch of his and Lich’s shared apartment, his usual combat armor doffed in favor of boxers and a tank top, lackadaisically swiping through the datapad in his hand. On one tab is the sidearm section of Omolon’s digital storefront; on another is a gallery of images displaying a nude Awoken. He lifts his can of alcoholic liquid from the coffee table and pours the last of it down his throat, sighing in satisfaction. It’s kinda nice to stay home for once while Lich goes out to grind away at bounties.

Fuck, he needed a day like this. He’s been seeing less than his fair share of action recently, but continuously dodging Vanguard assignments on Luna has been anxiety-inducing enough on its own. After his first visit, he vowed to make every effort he possibly could to never return. The Vanguard had assigned him a strike against the Hive on Luna today, and so he had to call in one of his favors for a friend to take his place in the fireteam, hence his current position at home while Lich is out and about.

An _Incoming Communication_ notification buzzes at the top of his screen, and he quickly closes the pornography tab before answering. It’s from Phylactery. That’s odd; Lich’s Ghost hardly ever lets themself be seen, and speaks even less. If Lich had a message for him, she’d give it herself.

“Hey, how’s it going?”

The Ghost doesn’t waste any time on pleasantries. “Lich needs immediate evac from K1 Logistics on Luna.”

Windy instantly bolts up from his slouched position. “Wait, what’s going on? Can she transmat out?”

Phylactery is doing their best to keep their tone clipped and curt as usual, but Windy still picks up on the desperate way they hurry over their words. “No, she’s currently catatonic. We’re stuck here until someone can provide an evac.”

“ _Catatonic?_ ” Windy balks. “What the hell happened down there?”

The Ghost’s distress is evident. “I’m not quite sure. Lich saw something; I think we were attacked, but she still isn’t cognizant enough to give me the details. I felt something suppress our Light. I was knocked unconscious, and Lich… she’s not recovering. We need you here as soon as possible.”

Fear grips Windy’s gut. Suppressed Light means that an RTL is on the table. He’s got enough dead friends walking around on Luna without Lich joining that long list.

“It’ll take me awhile to get there; can you call any nearby Guardians for backup?”

Windy can detect a wince in Phylactery’s tone. “No, this… isn’t the kind of thing that a random stranger would be able to help with. Might make matters worse, even.” the Ghost quietly speculates to themself. “What she really needs right now is someone she trusts.”

 _Well that’s cryptic._ He knows he’s not getting the full picture of events, and stumbling blindly into danger has always been more of Lich’s thing than his. He doesn’t exactly have time to press the Ghost further, though.

“Already on my way. Just gimme like twenty minutes to get there.”

“Right, thank you.” Phylactery seems relieved to no longer be discussing it.

Windy is already in motion as he hangs up the call. He drops the datapad on the cushion beside him, then vaults over the back of the couch in his usual manner. He doesn’t bother taking the time to change out of his boxers and tank top before exiting the apartment; he’ll don his armor in his jumpship. The residents of this housing block have seen far weirder things than his underwear, anyways.

 _Fuck. On Luna. Guess I won’t be able to avoid it after all._ Dread constricts around his gut like a snake as he approaches the Tower’s hangar, a sensation that he knows won’t dissipate until he and Lich are safely back on Earth. For now, he tries to shove it down as best he can. His current priority is making sure that his roommate doesn’t get RTL’d; once she’s safe, he can go drown his worries at the nearest bar and put this all behind him. He distracts himself by planning out the route he’ll take there, what drinks he’ll order, who he might meet up with...

As he’s exiting the Earth’s atmosphere, Windy briefly speculates that maybe finding a therapist would be a better use of his time than just getting drunk again, before he blasts off at near-light speed for Luna.

* * *

_Lich-5 awakens to the sensation of an immense weight on top of her, as if she’s trapped underneath a boulder. She’s laying stomach-down on the couch where she fell asleep, being pressed down into the cushions by the heavy object above her. She’s in an apartment typical of one of the Last City’s massive housing blocks, although not the one she shares with Windy. Night has long since fallen outside, casting the living room in darkness. What little illumination remains bathes everything in an odd vermillion._

_The Titan’s apartment is small, but his couch provided an adequate place to crash for the night after a particularly wild bar crawl. Lich can’t get drunk, but flying her jumpship home while exhausted would be just as dangerous. When she proposed the idea of crashing at a nearby friend’s place, one particular Titan was eager to offer. He’s new to her group of drinking buddies, and so it struck Lich as unusual that he would so readily invite her over. Once at his apartment, she figured out his reason pretty quickly._

_Tucked away in her backpack at the foot of the couch, Phylactery sleeps soundly, enjoying a well-earned rest after a long day’s grind. Lich is currently not being afforded that same rest. The weight on top of her shifts around erratically, fiddling with something, trying to get it open. She’s nearly driven to panic, but her fear keeps her frozen in place._ Just pretend you’re still asleep, _her mind unhelpfully provides._ Play dead, and soon the predator will go away.

_The predator does not go away. She feels a sudden spike of pain, and the irregular shifting of the weight quickly becomes paced and rhythmic._

_Lich can’t pinpoint when or how her view shifts, but at some point she finds that she’s above herself—literally. She’s watching the scene unfold from a third-person perspective, her disembodied consciousness hanging a meter in the air over her incapacitated frame. She can’t compel herself to move a single piston or servo, her physical form refusing to comply with her immobilized will._

_Long ago, in a time before she could remember, Lich had had nightmares in which she was pursued by an extreme danger, only to find her limbs paralyzed and unresponsive to her attempts to flee. This is a lot like that, only it’s not a nightmare; this is real life and the danger is directly on top of her. There is no chance to flee; she’s already been caught._

_The Titan’s head, now free of its helmet, rests on the couch next to hers. Despite the warmth of his breath, a chill runs through Lich’s system. She can feel his wet lips graze against her artificial skull as he begins to speak._

_“The Light does not hold its wielders to any standard of morality.” he whispers into the side of her head, where the ear would be if she were human. There’s a horrible wrongness in his tone, like multiple beings trying to speak through one mouth. “In the Dark Age, the Warlords inflicted terrible violence upon the innocent, just as_ he _inflicted violence upon you.”_

_The motion gradually escalates in speed and magnitude, pressing Lich further down into the couch cushions with an oscillating rhythm. Her pain briefly increases as the pace picks up, but it quickly turns dull, and a sensation of warmth grows in its place as her own body turns against her. He’s speaking again, those wet lips and warm breath directly on her audio receptor. He doesn’t pause for air as he produces the words, regardless of his physical exertion._

_“In Light, there is only pain.”_

_There’s a groan from above her, and the weight slumps, ceasing its rhythm. Lich silently breathes a sigh of relief, although she’s still far too overwhelmed with disgust to really be relieved by any of this. She knows on some level that it’s only been minutes, although her dilated sense of time has stretched the ordeal into what felt like hours._

_The floorboards creak next to her, and the Titan exits the small living room, although Lich still remains effectively paralyzed. A heavy exhaustion has seeped into her chassis, now even worse than the one she was trying to cure by crashing here. Still unable to will herself to move, it isn’t long before unconsciousness claims her again._

* * *

Windy summons his Sparrow within the second he touches down on Luna. His stomach churns as he exits his jumpship, doing his best to keep his eyes on the ground and away from the lifeless red Guardians hanging motionless over the landing zone. The Pyramid must know this is a center of Guardian activity, and so the nightmares swarm here like some kind of macabre flock.

He passes three more of the crimson phantoms on his way to the dot Phylactery marked on his heads-up display. He gives each of them as wide of a berth as he reasonably can, trying to keep them in his periphery while still steering the vehicle on course. If he looks at one too closely, there's a decent chance he’ll recognize it. He fails to give the third one enough room, and winces under his helmet as it wails at him for help in a voice he’s pretty sure he can put a name to.

Phylactery’s coordinates lead him to the K1 facility at the far end of Archer’s Line. A short distance in, he finds his roommate’s distinctive hive-bone helmet lying discarded to one side. It’s not until he proceeds down a hallway and searches behind a storage container that he finds the Warlock it belongs to. She doesn’t appear to be in any immediate physical danger, although he wouldn’t think it purely by her posture; she’s curled up in a fetal position on the floor, trembling violently, the shutters over her optics squeezed as tight as they’ll go.

One of the red phantoms looms over her cowering form. This one is clearly a Titan, and Windy can’t restrain his relieved exhale when he fails to recognize it. It does not turn to acknowledge him as he enters, keeping its blank gaze fixed on the ball of a Warlock curled behind the box.

It takes Windy a moment to realize that Lich is crying. Her digital optics don’t feature tear ducts, but the anguish in her soft vocalizations is unmistakable. It’s a sound that he doesn’t hear often, but still far more than he’d like.

Windy steps straight through the phantom towards his friend, passing through it as if it’s not even there. The spectral Titan’s body offers no resistance and induces no sensation. The thing recoils in a mimicry of pain, then disperses into maroon wisps as if it were mist. The instant it vanishes completely, her optics fly open.

The first thing that Lich sees is Windy leaned over her, right where _he_ had stood, offering her a hand.

"W-windy?" She accepts the hand graciously, allowing him to pull her to her feet. “What are you doing here?”

“Phylactery told me you needed an evac.” The somber concern in his tone catches her by surprise, and she briefly feels a pang of guilt for causing him to worry this much.

Lich emits a single humorless laugh, barely holding in a sob behind it. “Yeah. You could say that.” She’ll have to thank her Ghost for their forethought later. She takes a moment to collect herself, brushing the lunar dust off her robes and trying in vain to suppress her shivering.

“You didn’t have to come for me.” she tells him frankly, refusing to meet his sympathetic gaze. “I know how much you hate this place.”

“Lich, it’s fine. There is nothing in all of Sol that could make me leave you behind.”

For a moment, Lich looks like she’s about to cry again, before she closes the distance between their bodies and embraces Windy in a tight hug. He tentatively returns the gesture, protectively wrapping his arms around her back, and her hold on his torso quickly turns into a death grip. She’s no longer crying, but he takes careful note of the way she still shivers and shakes in his embrace.

Lich buries her face in the crook of his neck, hiding away from the world in the rough fabric of his Hunter cloak. Her chemical receptors flood with the particles that cling to the garment; it smells like his shampoo and sweat and the dust of a hundred worlds, all composing into a unique odor that is very distinctly Windy. His smell is grounding, bringing her attention back to the here and now.

“So, did the nightmares get to you?” he asks, tracing his fingers over the top of her fiberglass cranium in the way he knows she likes. He immediately withdraws his hand when she unexpectedly flinches away from the gentle contact. “I thought you hadn’t lost anyone.”

Lich shakes her head gently against his cloak. “I, uh… I saw _him_ again.”

Windy’s blood freezes. Then the phantom Titan was—

“Oh shit _,_ Lich, I’m so sorry.” He suddenly feels very conscious of the way he’s holding her.

Windy can’t forget the morning that Lich had nearly collapsed into their apartment, utterly disheveled after a long night out, and he had to delicately explain to her that sex is not a required payment for a male friend lending you his couch to crash on. Working through that day had been a painful experience for them both, although Windy has no illusions about which of them had it worse. Despite his seniority as a Guardian, dealing with this particular type of violence was entirely outside of his expertise. To his knowledge, aside from him and Phylactery, she’s never told another soul of what happened that night.

“This fucking Pyramid.” he spits out venomously, staring out at the lunar expanse beyond the facility. _That fucking Titan._ Hate festers within his ribcage like rot. At the time, he’d had half a mind to bust down the Titan’s front door with his Golden Gun in hand, ready to vaporize both him and his Ghost. But Lich needed him more than that Titan needed a bullet, and so the obligation to support her had stayed his hand.

With the Pyramid, though, it’s so much worse. Even though he couldn’t act on his impulse against the Titan, at least there had been some degree of hope there. With how utterly infinitesimal he is compared to the Pyramid’s world-ending might, he doesn’t even get the luxury of a revenge fantasy.

"It was like—" Lich begins to speak, but stops short as her chassis is taken by a violent shiver. Windy can almost feel the intensity of the chill that runs through her. "Like being there all over again."

His attention snaps back to her, and all the hate goes cold. His rage is not what Lich needs right now. Staying angry is impossible when she’s still so visibly distressed. He mentally reminds himself that this is her pain, not his; she’s the one who gets to have the revenge fantasy, if she so chooses.

“Yeah. I... get what that’s like. It sucks, but the suck is ultimately temporary. You’ll get through this.”

The pair are silent for a moment as Lich’s mind swims. She really wishes she could take his words to heart, but the memory of _him_ freshly burned into her mind is all she can focus on. She tries to clear her thoughts by concentrating on the steady rise and fall of Windy’s chest, while her own remains eternally still. She reminds herself of what’s real: he’s here, holding her in his arms, and soon they’ll be home safe. The danger has long since passed, and was never even here in the first place.

“I feel disgusting.” Lich voices the thought aloud, her gaze remaining firmly downcast. “I’ve felt disgusting since that night. I don’t know if it’s ever gonna go away.”

Windy winces, sucking in a quiet breath through his teeth. "That… I lack experience with. But, from the experience I _do_ have, I can tell you that it’s not true." Now he’s the one to strengthen the embrace. Through the heavy weave of her robes, he soothingly runs a hand up and down her mechanical spine, and is relieved when she relaxes into the touch rather than flinching away. "You’re smart, and beautiful, and brave, and you can be _really really annoying_ when you want to be, but _I_ _still care about you._ You’re the furthest thing from disgusting that I can imagine. What _he_ did doesn’t make you any lesser as a person; you’re still the same Lich I’ve always known.”

Lich tries to form a response, but words fail her, immediately getting caught in the knot that’s formed behind her speakers. She settles for simply holding Windy close, savoring the feeling of their arms wrapped around each other. Some part of her is still trapped in that sewage pit, but it’s further away now, distanced from her by the closeness to him. For the briefest moment, she believes with absolute certainty that everything he said is true, and almost manages to clamber her way out.

“Y’know, if Guardians really are amoral, you’re a pretty good counterexample.”

“Hm?” He turns his head towards hers with a raised brow.

“Ah, nevermind. Symmetrist ramblings.” Windy can’t help but notice another chill run through her.

It’s a long while before Lich feels stable enough on her own to leave his arms. When she finally begins to move away, he retracts his protective embrace, allowing her to separate from him without resistance.

"You ready to head home now? I'll ride with you to the landing zone and fly us back to Earth. We can pick up your jumpship later."

Lich releases an extended sigh, exhaling her residual tension into the thin lunar atmosphere. “Sure. Thanks for all this, by the way. I… needed to hear that.”

He gives her a warm, relieved smile. “Don’t mention it.”

Lich finally escapes from K1 Logistics with her hand firmly in Windy’s. While the Sparrow is intended to be a single-occupancy vehicle, that’s never stopped particularly affectionate Guardians from riding them two at a time. Lich and Windy share the single seat, with her clinging to his back, holding on with her arms wrapped around his midsection.

The ride back to the landing zone is short, but both Guardians savor it. The red phantoms don’t cause either of them much distress on their return trip. Holding each other close, the nightmares seem just a little bit fainter.


End file.
